Daniel Temkin's computational and photographic work examines the clash between systemic logic and human irrationality. It includes programming languages where we carry an excess of meaning and gesture to code; he recently published Forty-Four Esolangs, the first artist's monograph of programming languages (MIT Press, 2025). It includes Folders, which dematerializes text and asks programmers to write code by dragging folders into other folders, and FatFinger, a version of JavaScript that allows typos and misspellings as valid code. His language Rivulet has been called the most beautiful programming language, and will be displayed in Paris's UNESCO building in early 2026.
Temkin's Straightened Trees are shot on large-format film and then straightened with custom code, warping strip malls, telephone poles and restaurant signs into curves that once belonged to the elms, palms, and oaks they stand beside. His Dither Studies explore the foundational photographic algorithm as acrylic paintings, rendered in colors that "vibrate against each other in a most hyper-chromatic, retinally-stimulating way," The Brooklyn Rail writes. They start with asking the machine to represent an impossible color, which produces seemingly irrational patterns. Both bodies of work use media less associated with technology, in part to emphasize algorithmic and human processes rather than technological tools. Dither Studies is also a web app and immersive installation which covered the lobby of the Museum of the Moving Image in late 2025. The Glitchometry series of computer-generated c-prints is built by applying sound algorithms to simple shapes, transforming them while seeing the result as sound waves.
Temkin has written about code and programming languages as an art form for publications like Hyperallergic, and in many academic journals including Leonardo and World Picture Journal, as well as his blog esoteric.codes. Esoteric.codes brings together work by artists, writers, and hacker/hobbyists who challenge conventional notions of computing, connecting work that resonate conceptually but emerge across very different disciplines and communities. It won the 2014 ArtsWriters.org grant from Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation, has been exhibited at ZKM and written in residence at Signal Culture and at the New Museum's New Inc incubator. He have spoken on this subject at the New Museum, and many conferences, including SIGGRAPH, SXSW, and Media Art Histories.
He received his MFA from the International Center of Photography / Bard College. Group exhibitions include Open Codes at ZKM, TRANSFER Download at Thoma Foundation, xCoAx at Museu do Chiado, Dumbo Arts Fest (where his work was projected on the Manhattan Bridge), Future Isms at Glassbox Gallery. His work has been a critic’s pick for Art News, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe.
